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naraburns nihil supernum
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Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Top albums, Part III
161 Various Artists – A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records (1963)
Intelligent Christmas albums are rare, but for Phil Spector it was almost the perfect format. First, Spector’s production was always more important than the contributions of the individual artists, at least until he started working with acts outside his orbit. Second, the pop world at the time was singles-oriented and reliant on outside songwriters. Filling up an album with prime new material would have been a waste, as the same material could have sustained a dozen hit singles. Off-the-shelf Christmas tunes don’t carry that risk, and there are enough good songs to make the whole album an enjoyable experience. And the fact that it’s a seasonal album rather than a regular covers album means that, if nothing else, people will play it at Christmas time. What we end up with is 35 minutes of prime Spector, punctuated by the one prime original he kept up his sleeve for moments like this, “Christmas Baby Please Come Home”, which became enough of a stone classic that Darlene Love performed it on Letterman every Christmas until he retired.
160 Blood, Sweat & Tears – Blood, Sweat & Tears (1968)
Critical consensus has it that after Al Kooper left BS&T after one album the band became a shell of itself as Kooper’s vision of merging rock, jazz, blues and classical music gave way to a pop band with a horn section. Critical consensus is wrong, and while that first album is indeed very good, this one is better, as it doesn’t so much abandon that original vision as refine it, giving the songs extra polish and substituting Kooper’s vocals with those of the much more accomplished David Clayton-Thomas. Yes, the pop hits were there, but “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” uses Kooper’s arrangement, their version of Billie Holliday’s “God Bless the Child” has become the starting point for renditions by jazz musicians, and the album begins and ends with variations on Satie’s “Gymnopaedies”. Pop music indeed.
159 Peter Gabriel – Peter Gabriel [Melt] (1980)
After leaving prog-rock band Genesis for a solo career, Peter Gabriel didn’t seem to know what to do. His first two solo albums, for all their charms, seemed indecisive, without any stylistic focus or cohesion. With this record, however, he would craft the identity that would last the rest of his career. The songs are dark, touching on subjects from burglary to assassination. Gabriel’s voice exhibits a degree of paranoia rivaling that of David Byrne, but without the latter’s sense of irony. The production—most notably the lack of cymbals—gives the music a scary edge that befits the subject matter. It manages to sound fresh for the ‘80s in a way that’s not stereotypical ‘80s. And yet, the album’s final cut, while ostensibly about death, provides a silver lining. For while the 1977 death of anti-Apartheid activist Steven Biko at the hands of police may have been a tragedy, it was a tragedy that inspired hope, and Gabriel manages to let this shine through the doomy sound of the album without sounding overly sentimental.
158 Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago (2007)
In the years since this album came out, Justin Vernon has tried to distance himself from the mythology that the album produced; times of immense personal crisis generally aren’t fun, regardless of the art they may produce. But what’s important here is that this album sounds like the mythology suggests it should—that it was written (and largely recorded) over the winter in a remote Wisconsin cabin as its author was recovering from illness and the breakup of his former band while longing for an old girlfriend who slipped away. The spare, mostly acoustic instrumentation, rudimentary percussion, layered, wordless, vocal harmonies, and judicious (for once) use of auto-tune as an effect certainly makes the listener feel like he’s in a rustic cabin in the dead of winter, while the unconventional song structures provide a degree of interest that most “homespun” recordings sorely lack. Vernon would spend the rest of his career as of this writing indulging his worst instincts, but on this record he still had some restraint.
157 James Brown – Live at the Apollo (1963)
Before James Brown revolutionized soul and invented funk, he was Mr. Dynamite, and was developing his reputation as The Hardest Working Man in Show Business by constantly touring the so-called Chit’lin Circuit and recording at a furious pace. Brown’s studio albums of the time were ad-hoc compilations of singles, b-sides, and rejects, added without regard to how old they were or even whether they had appeared on an album before, so if early Brown is going to make the list at all, it’s going to be for a live album. And what a live album. The audience is audibly ecstatic, and Brown plays through his hits like someone who does 200 shows a year and can’t afford to have an off night.
156 Jurassic 5 – Quality Control (2000)
In the last installment, I discussed how dismal the state of mainstream rap had become by the year 2000. And while most alternative rap artists sought inspiration from rap’s Golden Age of circa 1988–1995, J5 went back to the Old School. But this was no mere revival; while the group adopted an Old School aesthetic, there was a twist. In the early days of rap, most groups used a DJ live, while record companies would bring in a live band for recordings. But the difference was academic, because the goal was simply to have a steady groove for the MCs to rap over. In J5, DJ NuMark and (especially) Cut Chemist added a level of sophistication to the craft that exemplifies why turntables are really instruments in their own right. The other major difference is that rap’s roots were in 3 hour battles at parties and the like, and early records were viewed as mere distillations (or, less charitably, bastardizations) of the authentic experience. By 2000, composition had become as important as rapping skill, the result being that Quality Control works as an album the way no Old School album ever did.
155 Madlib – Shades of Blue: Madlib Invades Blue Note (2003)
There’s a kind of dilemma that exists around brilliant hip-hop producers. Their talent lies primarily in creating beats for rappers to rap over. When the really good ones work to their full potential, the background overshadows the foreground, and the rapper fights for attention on his own record. But when they release solo recordings, there’s a distinct sense that each piece should really have a rapper. For this record, Madlib was given complete access to the tape vaults of legendary jazz label Blue Note, and he offers a master class in how producers should assemble their own albums. The beats here have enough melodic content that they stand on their own without being repetitive, a number of the tracks contain sampled vocal parts, and there are a few brief spoken word interludes that aren’t overlong like on other rap records (i.e. they actually work as interludes). To top it all off, there is one true vocal track, situated near the middle of the album to break it up nicely. It features little-known rapper M.E.D (a better-known name would be too distracting), and both the rapper and producer know when to back off and let the other shine.
154 Bob Dylan – The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963)
This is the album that convinced groups like The Beatles that there was more to life than pop songs and that rock & roll music and led them to experiment with song structure, political statements, and all the rest of what would come to a boiling point around 1966 and usher in a true revolution, right around the same time as Dylan himself was moving in the other direction, tossing out folk convention to give his music a harder, bluesier edge. But that was all in the future. For now, this is simply a damn good folk record. Dylan is able to be overt enough to please the folk crowd and oblique enough to be true to himself, and the material is stylistically diverse but musically cohesive, a difficult feat when it’s just one man and his guitar.
153 Sam Cooke – One Night Stand (1963)
To be brief, everything I said about the James Brown Album applies here as well. Just another prime example of a true professional doing what he does best.
152 Prefuse 73 – Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives (2001)
Electronic musicians have a distinct advantage over hip-hop producers, despite largely covering the same musical territory, in that they’re not expected to make beats for rappers. Their realm is pure instrumentals, and, as such, they can afford to be more adventurous in how they construct songs. That isn’t to say that they don’t use rappers, but when they do the rapper is expected to be fully subservient to their whim, as he’s really just another instrument to manipulate. This means Prefuse 73 can get away with using name talent (in this case MF Doom and Aesop Rock) where a guy like Madlib can’t, since each performer is expected to step outside of his usual role. The result is an album that stands squarely at the intersection of electronic and hip-hop.
151 Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest (2009)
One of the most baffling albums ever recorded. It’s Indie Rock. But there are folk elements. And jazz elements. And pure pop elements. And progressive elements. But it’s not weird. And it’s certainly not some lame-ass “eclectic mix”. It certainly sounds like a normal album when you listen to it; it’s only when you try to describe it that it becomes indescribable. I mean, I could probably describe it if I really went into the weeds, but I’m running up on a character limit. At the very least it can’t be described in broad strokes. But it’s also really, really good. That’s the important thing. I guess you’ll just have to listen to the record.
I love Veckatimest. Thanks for posting these, I enjoy reading them when you post them.
You might have already said this in another post and sorry if so, but about how many times have you listened to each album on your list? Are there ones that you've only listened to once or twice, or have you listened to each of them at least a handful of times?
Most of these I've listened to quite a few times, but there are a few I've only listened to once. It can be argued that one listen is not enough to full evaluate an album and I can agree with that to an extent; the problem is that there's a lot of stuff out there I'd like to listen to and life's too short for me to insist on, say, three listens to make sure that a particular album is really a 4 star album. That being said, in the decade+ that I've been doing this I've made over 7,000 evaluations (albums plus singles), and at this point I know a five star record when I hear one.
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I'd like to see your CCR album rankings. Can you share?
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